Monday, August 18, 2014

Here you see an internal Time Inc. spreadsheet that was used to rank and evaluate “writer-editors” at SI.com… Most interesting is this ranking criteria: “Produces content that [is] beneficial to advertiser relationship.” These editorial employees were all ranked in this way, with their scores ranging from 2 to 10.

Anthony Napoli, a union representative with the Newspaper Guild, tells us: “Time Inc. actually laid off Sports Illustrated writers based on the criteria listed on that chart. Writers who may have high assessments for their writing ability, which is their job, were in fact terminated based on the fact the company believed their stories did not ‘produce content that is beneficial to advertiser relationships.’”

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Ironic coming from Gawker that features "paid stories" by advertisers on their home page. I guess you could say they aren't trying to hide it, but then again, when you kill irony you can do anything you want.

I'm reasonably certain Conde Nast has never owned or operated Gawker. And you can be certain that Hamilton's boss would fire him toot sweet if people stopped reading his stuff, no matter how good it is.

I'm reasonably certain Conde Nast has never owned or operated Gawker. And you can be certain that Hamilton's boss would fire him toot sweet if people stopped reading his stuff, no matter how good it is.

Holy ####, I have no idea how I was wrong on this just goes to show confirmation bias sneaks up on you. I would have bet a very large sum of money this morning that Conde Nast bought Gawker around 2006. Man, awful, I feel very dumb.

So very glad I'm out of journalism. This pernicious development, where a reporter's value was determined solely by page hits/revenue generated, was creeping into the newsroom when I got out in '09. Since then, it's given up on creeping and has decided to kick down the newsroom doors.

The problem with Gawker websites in general is that they're mostly a morass of "viral" #### with some really good stuff that you don't want to sleep on. I get the sense that they've basically made their peace with being mostly awful and feeling better about themselves by occasionally doing good journalism.